Parking meters = $ = helping Muni, MTA commissioner asserts

A controversial proposal to install about 5,000 new meters in neighborhoods where curbside parking has been free is on hold until late spring at the earliest, San Francisco transportation chief Ed Reiskin reemphasized today.

Protest sign posted in the northeast Mission.

The proposal to plant meters in patches of Mission Bay, the Mission, South of Market, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill was met with overwhelming opposition from residents and business owners lamenting both the potential cost and hassle of having to plug the meters.

“Based on some of the reaction and some very legitimate concerns both substantive and process-wise that were raised,” Reiskin told his governing board, “we are going to take a few months to circle back, do some more data-gathering, do some more engagement with the broader sector of the community and come back to the board at some point … with similar proposals or different proposals based on that extra time.”

He said part of the renewed study will consider expanding permit parking in certain areas.

Municipal Transportation Agency staff has been emphasizing that the meters are needed as a tool to better manage parking in neighborhoods where finding a legal spot is already tough and expected to get worse. But Joel Ramos, who serves on the oversight board and who supports the meter expansion plan, said the prospect for more money also is at play.

Director Joel Ramos

Joel Ramos/SFMTA photo

“From the way that I see it, we are looking at a budget deficit and if we don’t get this hole addressed it’s going to translate to service cuts and that translates into attacks on our most vulnerable population,” Ramos said.

Much of the city’s parking revenue is used to fund Muni transit service, which has been hit with fare increases and service cuts.

Ramos also took some of the most vocal opponents of the meter proposal to task. “I did hear a lot of hyperbole at that meeting,” he said in reference to a packed community forum he attended on Jan. 30 in which members of the public vented their anger and frustration at Reiskin and other transportation agency officials in the room.

“I thought that a lot of the tenor that was coming from the community was rude, to put it nicely. I certainly hope that we can move forward in this conversation with a little more respect with one another.

“We do need to come to some sort of compromise,” Ramos added, “and I think that the MTA has demonstrated that willingness to reach out to the community, but we have to come to a place starting where we agree, and I think I did hear refreshingly that there was a substantial amount of folk that did recognize that free parking isn’t free, and we need to find a way to accommodate the needs of the city through a better look at how we can better manage the parking there.”